Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Hello everyone, We have returned from our easter trip to Manilla. What an interesting trip this was!

Between getting our tickets and arriving in Manilla, we were warned it was a dangerous place. Shortly after arriving we kept hearing 'be careful'. So it put us a little on edge. However, there wasn't too much to worry about. We were also warned that nothing would be open since it was Holy Week.

We checked into our ghetto ass hotel and laughed a bit at all the half asked service and amenities....

DAY 1

We left our hotel for a walk around the city.. Alot of street kids (naked and begging) led the way to a very big and beautiful Rizal Park

... which had some kite flying and what looked to be very tasty food. Note- the bumbag I sported until it broke. Some of the food stalls around the park were selling awesome looking fried chicken (that quickly struck a yearning within us).

Later that evening we ate a 'Hong Kong' restaurant. It was super western and overpriced.

After dinner we hit up the nightlife area of Malate and quickly found our favorite bar of the trip

After a day our wandering around and drinking red horse beer, it was good to sit down and drink more red horse beer.

Some really cool looking fish. The tanks were pretty good for the most part, the whole place looked pretty well maintained.

After a few small fish tank sections there was a tunnel that held sharks and sting rays and various other gnarly fish.

The oceanariam took a decent amount of time to get to...

THEN, a highlight for me was the fish spa that followed.

Very funny sensation, ended up being very relaxing. These 'Doctor Fish' swarmed to my manky feet and started eating all of the dead skin, was ticklish but felt really nice. I recommend anyone to try this if you get a chance!

Next was the Sea Lion Show

It was a well done show, and the Sea Lions didn't seem to be too depressed.

We did one more thing called 'Jellies' or something, just a bunch of jelly fish, pretty lame actually...

For Dinner we hit up our fav bar Erra's Grill for some chicken and fish, it was pretty superb.

Meet some cool street kids, Big Steven and Little Steven, they were really friendly and just all around cool dudes.

We had a couple more brews, then headed across the street to watch a live band called "The Boss" I think. They were really fun, and the all the bar staff was really friendly! When the band finished their first set we did a little bar hopping. Ended up at some really crap english bar, where we were the ONLY patrons.

DAY 3

Starving for breakfast, I headed across the street to The Yellow Cab Pizza Co. for some breakfast bagels (which rocked my world). On the way there some guy was trying to sell me a taser, kept showing me and following me, a bit of a freaky thing to wake up to.

This Zoo is Asia's oldest Zoo... and it totally shows. The cages were so small and depressing, none of them had water and the animals looked suicidal... It was pretty sad to be here actually.

They had a lot of tigers (although, I don't have any pictures, cause they were all sleeping).

The zoo was also home to quite a few monkeys, but the cages were far too small to get any pictures.

There was a Zebra enclosure where one 'zebra' had it's strips almost all gone, looked as though they had just painted them on a horse... the real Zebra was in a very small house...

Pretty sad to see all those animals like that, We were there for a couple of hours at least and didn't see any Zoo staff at all.

So, after the Zoo we walked back to our hotel and discovered a big mall was open, so we popped in to do a bit of shopping and a bit of lunch.

On the taxi ride into town from the airport, we had seen a Kenny Roger's restaurant and decided we needed to eat there! We found one in the mall and got very excited. Geez, Kenny, your food sucks, it was gross. Very disappointing!

We went in to check it out, all of the servers were little people and they had a huge amount of different beers and ciders, super cool place and the decor was all lord of the rings paintings

there was going to be a band playing later that evening, so we went back to the hotel to get a bit of rest before going back to check it out. I sure hope the band wasn't little people, because we ended up crashing and missing it...):

DAY 4

Last Day in Manilla, we checked out of the hotel and went to the mall for some brekkie.

Headed over to Intramuros (a walled city built by the spanish). It is the oldest part of the city of Manilla. We popped into a cathedral there for the opening of Easter Sunday Mass.

made for some cool pics

On the way into Intramuros, I spotted some cool graffiti...

We were getting very hot, so decided to head back to Ocean Park for some swimming.

After eating at Gerry's Grill (where we finally had some friggen FRIED CHICKEN) we got a ride back to the airport. and that's all he wrote!

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

After months, I am finally finished a long-overdue painting (not really due for anything). I am pretty psyched as to how this turned out! I took pictures of the progress so I think I will post them all to make this post a bit more interesting...

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

LUCKILY I stumbled upon a Darth Vader helmet almost accidentally. I have been searching for one for a while now, this guy was tucked away in a toy shop in my Fav toy mall.... It's dusty and scuffed and kinda cheap, but it's friggen VADER!

On a related note, I have been doing a few drawings of my favorite unsung heroes of the Original Star Wars Trilogy...

Thursday, April 14, 2011

So our third row tickets to Bob Dylan were good and bad, awesome to have a seat so close, but once the music started a swarm of nosebleed ticket holders rushed to the front and stood in our way. Oh well, that's life. Anyways the show was good/highly enjoyable. It was by no means comparable to a 'back in the day' Dylan show, but that is obviously to be expected when you got a non stop touring 70 year old rocking the mic.

His guitar skills were fading a bit, his harmonica skills have just gotten better, and his voice was ROUGH. I couldn't understand a word he said most of the time. He mostly played blues, didn't really play any folk, which was probably my only disappointment of the night. It was funny when he did play anything we knew, cause you could only guess the song when he hit the chorus.

Not mocking the old fart, just being honest. Still had a great time and really glad I got to see Bob Dylan live! Was well worth it!

P.S - What the EFF is up with his new(ish) Logo? The bizzare and super ugly Tribal Eye....

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Last night was OFF the HOOOOK! Well it was pretty rad anyways. The return of two great bands + a new sound system at the Wanch made for a dope night with a great line up and a fun birthday celebration for Ben McCarthy of Poubelle International.

Since today is a public Holiday (and coincidentally my regular day off, not really fair but whatever) Ben had a big birthday blowout with a ton of friends new and old....it went like this-

Corey Tam (or One Horse Town as they like to be called now) did a fancy set with a few new kickers!

Poubelle International were having a great time returning once again to the stage along with Zane Stroud now on the Bass Axe.

There, I made a poster for them, they don't even need to bother taking pictures or anything, that only took me 2 minutes.....

Then the return of Hungry Ghosts, also super fun rocking out to some good old HK music! Wish I had taken a picture of Luke Chow that night, he looked incredible!

Last but not least was DBK (David Bowie Knives) and they were great as usual, not much else to say except they make me happy to watch and laugh when I listen. I took no pictures last night, so this is a more word heavy blog than I usually post, but just deal with it.

Like I had mentioned earlier, the sound system at the Wanch is new and sounds superb, made last night even better!

Leaving shortly for Zane's birthday party so that should be super fun times as well. My phone can handle day time pictures, so expect a more visually stimulating post soon, mmmk?